EC Bestiary

"Till now, madness has been thought a small island in an ocean of sanity. I am beginning to suspect that it is not an island at all but a continent." -- Machado de Assis, The Psychiatrist.

Introduction

The field of meta-heuristic search algorithms has a long history of finding inspiration in
natural systems. Starting from classics such as Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization,
the last two decades have witnessed a fireworks-style explosion (pun intended) of natural
(and sometimes supernatural) heuristics - from Birds and Bees to Zombies and Reincarnation.

The goal of the Evolutionary Computation Bestiary is to catalog the, ermm... exuberance of
the meta-heuristic "eco-system". We try to keep a list of the many different animals, plants,
microbes, natural phenomena and supernatural activities that can be spotted in the wild lands
of the metaphor-based computation literature.

While we personally believe that the literature could do with more mathematics and less
marsupials, and that we, as a community, should grow past this metaphor-rich phase in our
field's history (a bit like chemistry outgrew alchemy), please note that this list makes no
claims about the scientific quality of the papers listed. The EC Bestiary puts classic works of
the metaheuristics literature (e.g., GAs, ACO) and some that describe their methods in mostly
metaphor-free language (e.g., JTF, CFO) side by side with others for which the scientific rigor
is, to put it mildly, lacking. In short, it is not a Hall of Fame of algorithms - think of it
more as The island of Doctor Moreau:
a place with a few good creatures, but which are vastly outnumbered by mindless beasts.

Finally, if you know a metaphor-based method that is not listed here, or if you know of an
earlier mention of a listed method, please see the bottom of the page on how to contribute!

How to Contribute

If you know a paper that should belong to this list, please send an
e-mail to either Claus or Felipe, or report an issue on our Github repo. The criteria for inclusion are quite simple:

the work must be in a peer reviewed publication (journal or conference);

the title or abstract must name the algorithm after the natural (or supernatural) metaphor on which it was based;

It is also important to highlight that only the earliest known mention for each metaphor is included.

More Info:

If you liked this list, you should read the paper "Metaheuristic: The Metaphor Exposed", by Kenneth Söresen
Need inspiration for your next Bioinspired algorithm? Check Marco Scirea and Julian Togelius' Daily Bio-heuristics bot.
Some of the algorithms listed here were found in a list compiled by Iztok Fister Jr. et al., which is available here. Iztok also recently published this paper reflecting on the ploriferation of metaphors in EC research.
A fantastic parody of this whole metaphor craze can be read here. Highly recommended!